He drained it to the last drop, and hurled it contemptuously against the wall, so that it was shivered to pieces. Immediately afterwards he seized a second glass-- "I drink to my enemies." With a wild peal of laughter he hurled the second glass into the air. In its flight it almost reached the ceiling, but it fell back again on the couch and did not break. "See, it mocks me and will not break!" exclaimed Banfi, with sparkling eyes. Azrael sprang up, seized the glass, and crushed it beneath her foot. In Banfi's heart the flames of three passions began to mingle--wrath, intoxication, and frantic love. He raised the third glass to his lips, and while the girl held his body fast embraced, Banfi exclaimed, with flushed face and strident voice-- "I drink to Transylvania." He drained the glass, but when he took it from his lips, the smile had frozen on his face, and instead of dashing the glass against the wall, he placed it gently on the table. A cold shudder ran through him at his own words--"I drink to Transylvania." He did not remove his hand from the glass, and would shyly have put it aside in a safe place, when the crystal, without any visible cause, suddenly burst in pieces, filling the magnate's hand with a million fragments. The diamond ring on his finger had scratched the glass, which, as all badly-cooled crystals are wont to do, shivered instantly at the contact, scattering its sparkling fragments in every direction like a Bologna flask. Banfi shrank shuddering back at this phenomenon and hid his face in Azrael's bosom, as if he had seen a portentous enchantment. The girl, however, impetuously seized her glass and cried exultantly-- "I drink to our love." Her voice broke the spell of Banfi's sobering horror and plunged him into frenzied joy. He caught the slim, supple body of the odalisk in his arms, and pressed her to him with the strength of a boa-constrictor: she was almost stifled in his embrace. "I know not what you have given me to drink," stammered Banfi, "but I have lost my head. I am beside myself for love." "Then take heed that thou dost not faint. Long hast thou let me languish, and I swore that when next thou camest, to murder thee in thy sleep, so that thou mightest never forsake me more." "Oh, do it, do it," whispered he, and drawing his dagger from his girdle and stretching himself at full length upon the couch, he laid bare his breast with one hand and gave the girl the dagger with the other. Azrael, with demoniacal ferocity, grasped the dagger by its beryl handle, and threw herself like an armed Fury upon Banfi, who looked at her with a frenzied smile as the sharp edge of the dagger grazed his breast. Then the weapon fell from the hand of the odalisk, and the madly-distended eyes and lips resumed their languishing smile. "Kill me rather than forsake me," stammered the girl, embracing Banfi. "We'll die together, eh?" "Yes, yes!" "Jest not, Azrael. I am ready to do what I say."